A Palace for Two

Tag Archives: to-do

When my friend Lindsay introduced me to Apartment Therapy in college, I fell in love. The two of us would sit around looking at pictures of beautiful houses and apartments, imagining what our places would look like when we weren’t so gross and college-like. It was like moving out of Worcester would magically make us cleaner and more organized and better at life. Yeah. Right.

Okay, so I guess it worked a little bit. When we bought our house, I was OBSESSED with AT, oogling house tours, picking paint colors, planning full-on demolitions of our house. While some of the ideas actually made it into our house (blue dining room! painted chandelier!), most of them were (and still are) pipe dreams. Over the past few months, I’ve become (slightly) more realistic about our space, our budget, and what will and won’t work. I’ve also come to terms with “our style” and how that compares to “what is correct according to interior designers” and “what is popular” (they’re often not the same). But guess what! It’s our house! We’ll do what we want!

I actually read an article on there once about how you shouldn’t put family pictures and personal artifacts on the first floor. Because no one wants to look at pictures of your kids and dogs and family vacations. Funny, because I’m pretty sure that I live in my house and I’ll spend more time there than any guest ever would. And if I want to look at pictures of me and Jesse frolicking through concretecornfields during our first road trip, then I sure as hell am going to do that.

Other than articles like that, AT is pretty great. This year, I noticed they’re doing this thing called January Cure. From what I gather, it’s a way of getting the year off to a good start, getting your house in order for the upcoming year. Since we’re finally settling in to the house and things are generally where we want them to be, I thought this would be a fun project to tackle. Also, it is winter and I have a really hard time staying motivated in the winter, and every little project helps!

Day 1 of the January Cure is Make a List of Projects! I love lists. I also love lists of things that I will never accomplish. Dishes I want to cook. Cakes I want to make. Places I want to visit. Things that need to be fixed in the house. Things I want to do in the house. Trust me, I am AWESOME at making lists. The best thing about Day 1? They tell you not to do anything! Just make a list! That is totally doable.

To make the list, you are advised to walk through each room in the house, making notes on any trouble spots organized by room. Note each area or item that needs a good cleaning, a de-cluttering or a re-organization. Then, go through the list and pick 3-5 things from each room as main focus points.

That’s it!

Walking through our house produced nothing that was unexpected. Everything on my list are things that I was planning on tackling over the next month or two anyway, so we’re all good!

Here’s my list:

PORCH

Wash floor and windows

Remove junk

Get a shoe rack

Paint it white

New front door

New light fixture

KITCHEN

Shelves for over table

Organize junk drawer

Get trash into a cabinet

Organize drawers and cabinets

Curtain over sink

New light fixtures

BATHROOM

Paint

Find a new mirror

Change hardware

New light fixture

Get a new bathroom rug & shower curtain

DINING ROOM

Build table and benches

Shelves

Finish curtains

Find new shades

LIVING ROOM

Paint

Rug

Ottoman

Hang artwork behind couch

New shades

HALLWAY & STAIRWELL

Paint

Hang pictures

New light fixtures

OFFICE

Rug

Chair

Curtains/shades

Get pictures off of the floor and onto the walls

New light fixture

SPARE BEDROOM

Make it more like a bedroom and less like storage

New lights

OUR BEDROOM

New dresser for Jesse

Rug

Paint

Space heater

Hang things on walls

New sheets

New light fixture

The awesome thing about this list is that every item on it is doable, just not in the month of January. These are all things that need to get done, at some point or another. The crossed-out items will have to wait until time, money, and weather allow, but everything else? I think I can do it!

The rooms I’m the most focused on are the living room and the bedroom. The office, if I have to, is completely off the list. Same goes for the spare bedroom (the only person who has been sleeping over is Jess, and she’s all about our couch). Now all I need is a little bit of motivation and a whole bunch of beer.

I wish I could say that, after being in the house for a month (already!), that we have made huge strides toward getting the place set up and ready to go.

But, let’s be honest. We are lazy. And we like hanging out and doing things that don’t involve a lot of work. Like drinking beer. And taking walks to downtown Maynard. And watching Pretty Little Liars. Even Jesse admits addiction to this show. It seriously cut into our unpacking/cleaning/painting time this weekend.

We have made a little progress though! We have:

Finished painting the dining room

Finished painting the kitchen

Sealed around the thing where the electrical comes into the house (I’m not sure what the technical name for this is…)

Filled in a hole in the field stone foundation that apparently a mouse had found its way through

Filled in ANOTHER hole in the BOTTOM of the field stone foundation that Crafty Mouse had chewed his way through AFTER digging about three feet underground (why Bean hasn’t killed this sucker is beyond me…)

Discovered that the fridge was leaking and, with the help of my dad, stopped it from leaking

When I first look at that list, I am a little disappointed that we haven’t gotten more done. I get really overwhelmed on the weekends and think that we should be doing so much more, but then I step back and I sort of like the slow progress of everything. We’re waiting for items that we really like. We’re waiting for everything to settle in. We’re waiting to see what we really want, and not what the internet tells us we should want. We did just buy this house a month ago, and while a month seems like a long time, it’s not. Our weekends are pretty busy! We’ve taken day trips to Portsmouth, NH. We’ve come back to the Fitchburg/Leominster area to pick up our veggies, hang out with my parents, and check out flea markets. We spend afternoons hanging out with Allen and Robin and their Most Adorable Child. We eat ice cream. We watch Pretty Little Liars. I make soup.

So while we’re not super fast at getting things done, I think the stuff we have done is starting to make the place feel like home.

The kitchen! I love the colors. LOVE. The backsplash looks awesome, and I’m so happy that we painted rather than tiled for now. It makes it so easy to change if we should get bored (ha, we’re too lazy to get bored). For paint, we used Behr Ultra Premium Plus in colors I cannot remember the name of right now (but will update when I can find the chips). The trim was already painted, and could probably use a touch-up, but that’s for another day (month? year?). I originally wanted to get rid of the grey laminate counter tops, but with the new color scheme, I can totally deal with them for another few years. They don’t look half bad, and they’re super easy to keep clean (aka they hide everything). I also originally thought I would want to paint the cabinets eventually (I’ve seen so many beautiful kitchens with painted cabinets), but I think they look great now. It’s amazing what removing a little yellow can do. This was the before (crappy pictures from Zillow, which still has our real estate listing for some reason):

I am SO GLAD the yellow is gone! The colors in the kitchen now look GREAT with our awesome dining room:

Painting the dining room was a trying experience. Covering white walls with dark blue paint is not the easiest thing in the world. It took us four coats in places, and a couple of spots still need to be touched up (including that taped-off pipe that I haven’t started on yet). The color we chose was Deep Blue Sea by Behr, and these pictures really don’t do it justice. In the sun, it almost takes on a blue-green color and it looks so much brighter (or as bright) as we were expecting. The room itself is obviously not done. The chandelier NEEDS to go, but we haven’t really looked for a new one yet, and aren’t quite sure what we want. The round table will eventually (before Thanksgiving I hope!) be replaced with a farmhouse table that we’re going to build ourselves. There are a ton of pictures I want to get up on the walls after I paint their frames white, and I would love to get some shelving up too. Maybe next weekend. Or while Jesse is drugged out from his wisdom teeth removal. He’ll wake up and EVERYTHING will be painted grey. He’ll love it.

So! That’s it for now. In reality, it’ll be another month before another post, because that’s the rate we’re moving. This week, I plan on finding the (a) power cord for my computer so I can take real pictures of the house, painting some frames, and maybe narrowing down some chandelier choices. In reality, we will probably finish the first season of Pretty Little Liars and make a good dent in the second. At least we’re being honest with ourselves.